Leurre wrote:I've met 'zero native speakers' before--people who somehow sound off / foreign / like a child in every single language they speak-- and it is not pretty.
I wonder under which circumstances one risk such a thing to happen? I did a quick google on zero native speaker but didn't find so much. If parents speak to the child in their native languages, it should get bilingual, given enough exposure?
Suppose it might happen if the parents speak with the child in a language they are not native in themselves, but only if this is not the common language spoken in the neighbourhood? E.g. parents speak English with the kid, but the society speaks another language.
I had got the impression that kids learn more language, and quicker, from their peers when they start to socialise in the society, than from their parents, and would pickup the language of the surroundings to fluency---i.e. becoming native speakers. But maybe it does not bootstrap correctly in all cases?